Recovering Health Costs From Conniving Pharma

"[Pharmaceutical distributors delivered these drugs] to pharmacies and hospitals in Canada in quantities that they knew or should have known exceeded any legitimate market."

"While much attention has been focused on the effects of street drugs contaminated by illicit fentanyl and carfentanil, there is another side of this crisis."

"We allege that Purdue was not alone in their illegal actions to drive profits."

B.C. Attorney-General David Eby

Attorney General David Eby speaks to reporters in Victoria, B.C., on April 26, 2018.

CHAD HIPOLITO/The Canadian Press

"Purdue Pharma (Canada) is deeply concerned about the opioids crisis, in British Columbia, and right across Canada,"
"The opioids crisis is a complex and multi-faceted public health issue that involves both prescription opioids and, increasingly, illegally produced and consumed opioids, as indicated in Health Canada’s latest quarterly monitoring report."
"Canadians are facing a complex public health issue in which all stakeholders, including the pharmaceutical industry, have a role to play in providing practical and sustainable solutions."
Purdue Pharma (Canada) 

"[I] whole-heartedly [support the lawsuit in view of opioid manufacturers' role in growing the phenomenon of opioid prescribing."

"We went from a time when physicians, it wouldn’t even come into their minds to prescribe an opioid – those medications are for cancer patients, we know they’re very dangerous – to a place where free samples of OxyContin are being given to people with relatively minor arthritis."

"I think this was driven in a huge part, if not fully, by the marketing practices of the industry ... It’s something that will go down in the history of medicine as an incredible tragedy in how the health-care system really had the wool pulled over its eyes."

Evan Wood, director, BC Centre on Substance Use

In April of this year, Health Canada followed the outcome of proceedings against Purdue Pharma in the United States, where the company has been forced to pay out $634-million in fines. Action would be taken in Canada, the department stated, should it determine that advertisements contribute to a significant safety concern, or should it be seen that they would effectively contravene Health Canada rules. Purdue Pharma (Canada) responded that its products are marketed in strict conformity to those rules. 

That industry assurance doesn't appear to have satisfied British Columbia lawmakers in view of the experience that province has had in an overwhelming and continuing epidemic of overdose deaths resulting from opioid use. Drugmakers in the United States, in view of similar outcomes are seeing hundreds of lawsuits launched from governments with claims that the drug companies have played a significant role in opoid addiction, resulting in an overdose crisis where 42,000 Americans lost their lives in 2016.

Prescription pills containing oxycodone and acetaminophen  THE CANADIAN PRESS/Graeme Roy

The proposed class-action lawsuit filed against pharmaceutical companies in the B.C. Supreme Court also targets retailers in a list of over 40 defendants including manufacturers such as Purdue Pharma, whose OxyContin pain pill has been implicated in Canada’s overdose epidemic; retailers such as Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. and the Jean Coutu Group (PJC). Inc.; along with distributors and wholesalers. And nor are brand-name and generic manufacturers exempt from the charge of deceptively marketing opioids as being less addictive than known to be, prescribed for conditions they ineffectively treat.

A now-transparent enough ploy to expose people in pain to addictive drugs by flooding the market with a product assumed to be safer and effective for a wide range of medical treatments, trusted to be true because that's what the manufacturers' medical literature claims is true when it has been patently false, unquestioned and trusted. British Columbia, the province hit hardest in Canada by the opioid crisis, had 1,399 deaths registered in the past year alone. It is now determined, at the very least, to recover the health costs associated with the opioid crisis.

New Brunswick last month also indicated that launching or joining a lawsuit for the purpose of recovering health-care costs related to the growing opioid crisis was under consideration. A judge in Saskatchewan had rejected a $20-million national settlement against Purdue Pharma (Canada) in March; his legal opinion was that the settlement was inadequate. The federal government has been urged to pursue compensation for the cost of treating addiction in Canada, as the second leading user of opioids after the U.S.

The estimated health-care costs of treating addiction across Canada is claimed to have amounted to around $1-billion, from 2011 to 2016. The State of Massachusetts sued Purdie and its executives, as the first state to name company executives in such a complaint in a lawsuit alleging Purdue deliberately deceived patients and doctors alike in the risks inherent in opioid use, pushing prescribers to maintain patients longer on the drugs, aggressively targeting vulnerable populations.

B.C.'s Mental Health and Addictions Minister Judy Darcy and Attorney General David Eby announced Wednesday that the province has filed a lawsuit against opioid drug manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors. Photo: Tessa Vikander, StarMetro, Vancouver